At 10:35am, Wilmer hopped out the back of chukwumaa’s Barney-colored SUV, in a grey sweatshirt and sweatpants, paired with basic white running shoes, and a silver ladder on his back that was barely distinguishable from his tall angular form. He appeared to be a quickly moving grey shape that almost blended in with the surroundings of the city.

With a rough shotlist, similar to a scavenger hunt, my job as performance photographer was to play Where’s Wilmer throughout D.C., with chukwumaa as my partner in the game. It was raining. Wilmer started the performance, next to the entrance of Marvin Gaye Park. Walking past a food line, he set up his ladder on the sidewalk, scaled it and scratched his first damp lottery ticket. He then proceeded to walk the valley of the shadows of Northeast towards Benning road. For a few blocks I followed him with my Canon A-1, my sneakers wet and knees soggy from bending down to shoot. (If you’re unaware, Marvin Gaye Park is located near Division Avenue and Dix Street—two names that I’m still sure Wilmer created by hacking google maps.)

Wilmer didn’t want to be outright followed, but by the time we got to Georgetown, after three hours of searching for him, I decided to abandon the rules and just shoot. Wilmer in his sweatsuit, juxtaposed with the brightly colored shops at Georgetown’s entrance. I ran around in my tan trench coat, stopping every so often and crouching down to get a shot.Wilmer walking down the cobblestone hill that leads to the waterfront, blending into the grey stones, with the belly of the highway ahead of him. I alternated between running behind him and following him on the opposite sidewalk until he got to the waterfront. Wilmer walking towards the waterfront steps, on a patch of wet green grass between spouting sprinklers. chukwumaa hastily drove down to the waterfront, and jumped out of the car to photograph the final moment with Wilmer’s iPhone. Wilmer perched on the ladder, the blue water behind him, perfectly composed like a classical painting, as he scratched the final ticket. chukwumma and I told ourselves we were on an urban safari, and like a real safari, we felt compelled to shoot fast and move recklessly, so that we didn’t miss the action. The citizens of Georgetown clearly weren’t amused by our game, or the performance in general. After Wilmer brought the performance to a formal close, he thanked us and we all left Georgetown in chukwumaa’s truck. We noticed that a cop car drove down to the waterfront as we left. At first he seemed to be simply monitoring the area and warning us not linger in an unauthorized parking spot. Though the performance wasn’t intended to be a spectacle, the juxtaposition of Wilmer’s grey sweatsuit and “working-class” prop began to stand out as he passed Union station and K Street, and especially in Georgetown--one of the cities most affluent areas--though not to an extent to cause alarm. It was a quizzical sight, but a non-threatening one. Two blocks later, the cop was still following us, his lights silently flashing. We realized we were being pulled over. Wilmer immediately told me to take a photograph, but I had already taken the film out of my camera, so he took a picture of the cop car from the viewpoint of the back window with his iPhone. I’ve never been more appreciative of cellphones cameras. When we stopped, I stepped out of the car with my hands up, and then heard chukwumaa tell me to get back in the car. The officer screamed at me, “Ma’am get back in the car and put your hands out the window.” He then walked over to chukwumaa’s window and shouted at him to keep his hands out the window, too, and informed us that someone had reported a suspicious looking black man in an army jacket near the waterfront; chukwumaa had on a tight fitting army jacket. The “concerned citizen” reported us because chukwumaa loosely fit the description of the Navy Yard shooter (dark-skin black man in army attire, slightly broad nose, bald head). Ironically, when we picked Wilmer up that morning, he had told us that a guy had opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard, killing several people. We were slightly worried, but I quickly forgot as we became engaged in the performance. Six cops cars arrived moments later. I immediately said, “We’re being stopped because we’re black,” started to hyperventilate and cry, while trying to explain to the officer that chukwumaa, Wilmer and I are artists and that we were working on a performance for Connersmith gallery. Luckily, my camera was still around my neck. I continued to cry as he asked us for our ID’s and whether any weapons were in the vehicle . I thought if I cried, they’d be less likely to become hyper-aggressive or violent, thus minimizing the possibility of chukwumaa getting shot. This is a less impractical fear than you may expect. For many black men in our country, this sort of interrogation is fatal (Trayvon Martin is only the most televised example). In another part of the city, or another city, in general, chukwumaa could have lost his life as a result of mistaken identity. I’m now going to insert a non sequitur. Bear with me; I promise it’s relevant. John Cage once said, “[a]rt should not be different [from] life but an action within life. Like all of life, with its accidents and chances and variety and disorder and only momentary beauties.” Wilmer told me before the performance, “the volatile nature of doing the performance in public means that things I'm thinking of will not happen, and things I can't imagine will […] so go with your gut where you feel to.” With this in mind, I regret taking the film out of my camera immediately after the performance “ended.” If Cage was right, if art is an action within life, and performance is susceptible to evolution, then the incident with the cops was as important to the performance as its original score. The run-in could be considered a response to Wilmer’s Faustian questioning. In Goethe's Faust, the protagonist makes a pact with the devil in an effort to gain infinite knowledge and pleasure. In Faust in the City, Wilmer was playing with this notion. It seemed that he was metaphorically questioning whether a migration from a low-income, “impoverished”, pre-gentrified neighborhood to a more upscale environment is actually the answer to one’s ultimate search for happiness. The resident of Georgetown who decided to call the cops on a “suspicious-looking black man” answered this question quite literally. For black men in America, it doesn’t matter where you are or what you do, prosperity and power are received on a string that can be yanked from you anytime you appear as a threat to the normative hegemony. Before the cops let us go, I gave my response back, by flipping off a videographer who showed up to catch the “D.C. shooter”: fuck the hegemony and fuck Georgetown.

Really? You wanna bash people about getting pulled over the same morning that a mass shooting occurred in the city? You wanna bash the person who called in a suspicious black male doing something weird in a military jacket when there were still reports on the news from the police that there may be multiple shooters, at least one of them in military style clothing? Nice job being insensitive to the things actually going on around you!

Reply

Legba

9/22/2013 05:13:34 pm

There was no second shooter, you mouth-breathing apologist for naked racism.

Sorry to hear that happened to you guys, glad to hear Chuk is okay.

Reply

DRR

9/24/2013 12:03:33 am

Legba - Nothing like citing information that was determined hours after this event took place. You know as well as everyone else that there were rerports of up to three shooters at the time this occured. Using your logic, any time a black person commits a crime, it will also be a crime for the police to stop a black person matching the description of that criminal. Keep screaming "RACISM" every time a cop stops and talks to a black person and when there is actual cause to get angry about how a police officer handles a situation, and your argument will be less effective since folks will just dismiss it as another case of a cop talking to black person and screaming "RACISM". You do more harm than good.

I'd just like to clarify that my notions of how the police officers would respond to my emotions last Monday weren't based on my buy-in to the way the patriarchy perceives women, but my understanding of it. I think it's ridiculous that men and women are treated differently and that our emotions are handled in very distinct ways. Still, in a crisis situation my fight or flight instincts kicked in. If it happened again, maybe I would just stay quiet, and at 23 I'm still learning the proper response to these things.

Reply

mona

9/23/2013 05:03:55 am

One thing you are failing to note about this incident, there was also word that a white male was involved in the shooting at the Navy yard. Do you know how many white males were stopped in the Capitol Hill area when this was all going down? Quite a few. I think you blew this into a racial thing for the very reason you said, your 23 and still learning proper responses. You also do women a huge disservice when you think resorting to hysterics is the way to respond to things. Your a little disingenuous when you yell "we are stopped cause we are black" then try to invoke the another stereotype of the "hysterical woman" to use to your advantage. If you don't like stereotyping you can't use any of them.